Ships' Passenger Lists

Ships' Passenger Lists were drawn up by shipping companies to identify passengers on particular voyages and the information contained in them varies, depending on the recording habits of the company involved.Very few passenger lists survive in Scotland.

The whereabouts of a particular passenger list should be sought from:
(a) the relevant record office in the country of arrival
(b) the records of the shipping company concerned
(c) the Public Record Office in London for departures to non-European ports after 1890 (BT27 records)

The BT27 records (Board of Trade, Series 27 held in The National Archives) are the collection of outward passenger lists for those departing U.K. ports from 1890 to 1960. In addition, travel originating from other European countries that passed through one of the busy ports of the United Kingdom would also be included as part of this collection.
These records have been digitised and are searcheable online through findmypast.co.uk

Shipping Lists

Scotlands Family, a Scottish genealogy site whose aim is to point you to free on-line data and information in diverse Scotland family history records, it includes lists of some of the principal internet sources for searching for Scottish emigrants, and also a year-on-year compilation of ships known to have left a Scottish port, or holding Scottish passengers, from 1680 to 1910.

TheShipsList website will help you find your ancestors on ships' passenger lists. It includes immigration reports, newspaper records, shipwreck information, ship pictures, ship descriptions, shipping-line fleet lists and more; as well as hundreds of passenger lists to Canada, USA, Australia and even some for South Africa. There are over 3,500 totally free access web-pages with new databases added regularly.